


Fractured Tellings

by Loreyulia



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fluff, JeanMarco Week 2016, M/M, Snippets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 02:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8311186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loreyulia/pseuds/Loreyulia
Summary: These are my contributions to JeanMarco Week 2016.





	1. Paper Cranes

JeanMarco Week 2016   
Day One, Prompt One: Magic 

 

Paper Cranes 

"Promish you won't tell any one," 

Marco's lisp is heavy since he's still not used to talking around a mouth full of metal wires, and rubber bands. His eyes dig holes into Jean's, intense and serious, and dark. Jean shakes his head frantically, his own eyes comically wide as he mimicks the sign of a cross over his heart. Marco takes a deep breath, and holds Jean's gaze for as long as possible, before his attention falls to the small stack of origami paper set between them on the wooden floor of their treehouse. 

The big, clunky looking fingers that Marco has not quite grown into, are surprisingly nimble and delicate when he begins to make precise, and focused folds out of a simple sheet of paper. Jean sits up, and cranes his neck as far as he can so he can watch Marco turn paper into something else. It's a magic trick in and of itself, and Jean marvels at the complicated methods, the exact science of it all. How an act as simple as folding paper, can become so much more. 

When he is finished, a tiny paper crane sits in the palm of Marco's hand. He presents it to Jean with a flourish, a self satisfied smile spread wide enough over his face, that the green bands around his braces peek through. 

"That's so cool!" Jean crows as he practically vibrates in excitement where he sits. "I don't understand why you don't want me to tell anyone though, what you did was totally rad!" 

Jean looks up from the miniscule white crane, and frowns when he sees the look on Marco's face. He seems scared, and unsure of something. It makes Jean's stomach feel like its being folded up like origami paper, into other shapes entirely. "That's not the whole secret... is it?" Jean slowly asks as the realization dawns on him. 

Marco squeezes his eyes shut tightly and frantically shakes his head. "Pleasshe," Marco begs, "don't tell a shingle shoul about thish." 

A special kind of trust has been built between Marco and Jean over the years, since the moment Jean found Marco crying on a curb about ten blocks away from his home, absolutely lost and unable to find his way back. He lead Marco home, and told him that from now on, they could walk to and from school together because they were friends. 

Jean places one of his hands on one of Marco's knobby knees, right over a dirty band aid that covers a nasty scrape from falling off his razor scooter a few days ago as they attempted to do Ollies. "I promise I won't tell a single soul, cross my heart and bet a thousand ring pops." 

"You know I can't eat thoshe any more Jean..." Marco mumbles with a hint of a smile starting to spread across his face. 

Jean just shrugs. Marco accepts it. 

With a sigh, he turns his focus onto the paper crane still resting in the nest of his palm. He stares at it long, and hard, his dark brown eyes lasered in on the thin, papery creature. It starts to wobble back and forth, ever so slightly as if it is being rocked by a gentle breeze. Jean's mouth goes dry, because he knows there isn't even a hint of a breeze in the dead, October air. This has been an Indian summer, the warm days trickle into Fall and never seem to end. 

The little paper crane suddenly hovers a few inches off of Marco's hand, and Jean watches as sweat beads at his best friends forehead while he concentrates all of his energy into what he is doing. It flaps its paper wings experimentally, before it starts to flutter around their heads. The afternoon sunlight shines through the thin, cream colored paper. 

"How are you doing that?" Jean asks, utterly dumbfounded by what he's seeing. 

"I don't know..." Marco replies, his concentration slipping in that moment, making the paper crane plummet back to the floor of their tree house. 

Jean mulls over what he has just seen for a few moments. "Can you do it again?" 

Marco seems to sigh in relief, and Jean knows with out having to ask, that it's because his friend was afraid of how he would react. 

"Yeah, I think I can." 

"Can we make different animals, and have you make them do different things? Ooooh, like make a frog that can hop around, or a lizard slither up the walls!" 

Marco gets lost in Jean's excited requests, and lets him fold as many animals as he wants with the leftover origami paper. 

They didn't know what Marco could do was magic, until he received a special letter in the mail almost a year later, inviting him to a very unique and prestigious school. Marco hated leaving his best friend behind, terrified of the rift their separating worlds would create in their friendship. 

It came as a surprise when Jean got an identical letter another year later when he turned eleven. And though the two of them ended up in seperate houses, you could always find them together, enchanting intricately folded pieces of parchment paper into all manner of creatures and objects. 

It would always be their own special brand of Magic. 

Even when Marco finally outgrew his braces, but grew into his clumsy hands. 

Even after Jean nervously confessed his feelings after one too many butterbeers, and they ended up awkwardly kissing for the first time beneath a sprig of paper mistletoe. 

Even when Marco graduated a year before Jean. Every morning, an owl would bring him some enchanted paper animal with mushy sentiments inked on its insides. Today it was a koi fish, and today it simply said, 

"I owe you a thousand ring pops." 

Jean simply smiles, and lets the fish swim lazily around his head for the rest of the day.


	2. The Juniper Tree

JeanMarco Week 2016   
Day One Prompt 2: Fairytale   
The Juniper Tree 

Jean hardly grasps what he is seeing. Hours have been spent, breaking his back under the weight of fallen allies. The cloying stench of decay permeates the air, swirls with the ash and smoke. He has seen dozens of pale, bloated faces-- each soldier unceremoniously tossed into the back of a wagon, and checked off of a list in a clean, methodical manner. 

He stops in his tracks, frozen in mute suspension. His hands shake. His bloodshot eyes widen, and he feels bile lurch up into his esophagus. 

"M-marco?" He hardly dares to breathe the name, the ashy taste of it on his tongue makes him feel sick. 

The boy slumped against the wall does not respond. 

Marco's face, at least what is left of it (and fuck does that make Jean weak in the knees, and a little faint. He had only pressed kisses to that freckled cheeck a couple days ago) is ashen, desaturated of the lively colors it once held-- as complex and lovely as an artists pallet. 

Dark brown stains the ground all around him. Jean knows Marco's been here for days... he had hoped that they were merely seperated by fitfull crowds and the task of cleaning up the dead. Now he realizes they are worlds apart. Living and dead. There's no medium between that. 

Jean knows the boy he sees is Marco Bodt. No questions needed to be asked. He'd counted the boys freckles often enough that he could tell him apart from even the most convincing doppleganger. 

This is the heaviest body of them all to carry, but when he has calmed down enough to do so, carry Marco's body he does. He places his best friend in the back of another cart. 

Jean watches the cart pull down the street, the clatter of the wheels against the cobblestones rattles his bones. He watches all of the potential, and possibility he thought he once had, with a boy as soft as cotton and sweet as spun sugar, pulled along to join the other faceless fallen. 

Later, when fire chars and breaks down flesh, sending souls among the smoke signals that drift toward the stars, Jean picks out a fragment of bone, blackened and unrecognizable. He's not sure who he is holding in the palm of his hand, but he likes to think it is Marco. The boy who once had the Midas touch, who turned Jean's skin golden and warm with every brush of his fingertips and soft, secret kisses. 

He remembers the book of fairy stories he found in one of his Mother's trunks, tucked away deep in the attic. The bright pictures, and the strange tales once captured his young imagination. His mother told him to keep them locked away. There was no room for fairytales in a world now built upon nightmares. 

Jean buries the tarnished bones beneath a Juniper tree. He knows it won't bring Marco back, fairytales weren't real. It still does not stop him from trying. 

He watches that tree grow over the bone. He likes to think a part of Marco grows into the tree as well. 

Sometimes Jean hears his laughter in the rustling of the leaves. He feels Marco's strength in the roughness of the bark. He sleeps under the Juniper tree, and the nightmares of a half remembered face rotted down to almost nothing, never plagues him then. 

He feels Marco in that tree. And Jean hopes that some day, when he himself is nothing but charred bones and memories, he can be buried here and become one with Marco once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry these prompts have not come out on time at all... Getting a new puppy takes up a lot of time, and I've shamefully been spending what little free time I do have playing Persona 3 Portable and watching Haikyuu and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood with a good friend of mine. I'll get all of these written up and posted when I have time between all of that


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